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Conscience orientation in children and parental attitudes toward independence granting and achievement inducement

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Title Conscience orientation in children and parental attitudes toward independence granting and achievement inducement
Names Draper, Henry E. (creator)
Schalock, Delbert (advisor)
Date Issued 1966-05-11 (iso8601)
Note Graduation date: 1966
Abstract This study focused on the relationship between parental attitudes
and the conscience orientation of children, testing the hypotheses that
(1) parents who had children with an external conscience orientation
would show significantly greater disparity between their independence
granting and achievement inducement attitudes than parents whose
children had conventional or humanistic orientations, (2) that parents
who had children with a humanistic conscience orientation would show significantly
less disparity between their independence granting and
achievement inducement scores than parents whose children had
external or conventional conscience orientations, and (3) that parents
whose children had conventional conscience orientations would show
a disparity between independence granting and achievement inducement
scores which would fall midway between the parents of children
with external or humanistic conscience orientations.
Fifteen students representative of each of three conscience types
were identified from 325 sixth grade children from various school
districts in central and south eastern Utah. The identification and
measurement of conscience orientations was achieved with a projective
story completion battery adapted from a measure developed by
Hoffman. Parental attitudes toward independence granting and
achievement inducement were obtained by means of an interview,
using the Parental Developmental Timetable, a paper and pencil
instrument designed for this purpose by Torgoff . These instruments
provided a single independence granting and single achievement
inducement score for each parent. The achievement inducement
score of each parent was divided into the independence granting score
to obtain a ratio of these two variables (the I/A ratio).
To determine if there was a significant difference in the I/A
ratio scores of parents whose children held different conscience
orientations, the parental data were treated by an analysis of
variance. Using raw score data no differences were found in the I/A
ratios between the three parental groupings, and the three hypotheses
stated above were rejected.
A derived score transformation technique of handling the data was then developed which permitted a more precise method of determining
the difference between the relationship of independence granting
to achievement inducement. The rationale permitted a high score
theoretically to represent parents whose children had a humanistic
conscience orientation, a low score to represent parents whose children
had an external conscience orientation, and the scores in
between to represent parents whose children had a conventional conscience
orientation. When an analysis of variance was applied to
these data, the hypotheses were again rejected. The data also were tested to determine the influence of the
parental independence granting and achievement inducement variables independently on the conscience orientation of children. This
analysis also revealed a lack of relationship between independence
granting or achievement inducement orientations on the part of parents
and the conscience orientation of children.
It was concluded, within the limits of these data, that the independence
granting and achievement orientations of parents are
unrelated to the conscience orientations of sixth grade children from
selected school districts in Utah.
In an effort to account for the negative findings corning from the
study, an examination of the sampling procedures, the measurement
procedures, and the conceptual framework was undertaken. In spite
of weakness in the sampling procedure, and the limitations of
measurement, it is the opinion of the investigator that the major
factor accounting for the negative findings was the inadequacy of the
conceptual framework. Had a conceptual framework been developed
which included a three-dimensional model, taking into account the
influence of parental warmth in relation to the ratio of independence
granting and achievement inducement, results in the direction predicted
may have occurred.
Genre Thesis/Dissertation
Topic Parent and child
Identifier http://hdl.handle.net/1957/48004

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